The Taskmaster Greg Davies and his unfailingly loyal, surprisingly hench assistant Alex Horne return with a brand new collection of comics who willingly signed up for definite fun and inevitable humiliation. The fantastic five hoping to win Greg’s golden bonce are: Amy Gledhill, Armando Iannucci, Joanna Page, Joel Dommett and Kumail Nanjiani, all of whom go hunting for a small creature, serve Greg vegetables and attempt to catch a golden t-shirt. But who will find all the oranges?
Taskmaster, Thursdays, C4, 9pm.
Interview: Greg Davies & Alex Horne
What did you make of Joanna Page?
A: Joanna was an absolute revelation because you largely see an actor playing their character, or being interviewed, and neither of those give you a full picture of the person. We suddenly had this other side of Joanna Page revealed to us, and that is someone who's incredibly tactical and clever. I've never known anyone who voices her strategy before she does the task. She tells you exactly what she's going to do, why she's going to do it, and then she evaluates how well it was that she did it. She had a race horse commentator style. But the main thing is she's incredibly funny and unique and clever, and she’s going to emerge as a star of this series.
G: I loved seeing that, because the character of Stacey is so big, so writ large in the culture, and Stacey is so ditzy. Joanna Page is far from that. She did have her moments, but we all have those moments where our brains collapse and we can't remember basic things we were taught in primary school. The only difference is we usually don't admit it, and she did.
A: Well, that's the other thing I was going to say. She has no filter. Some of the stories she told will live with me forever.
G: If you were in a relationship with Joanna Page, you would always know where to stand.
A: Yes, you know when you're in trouble. When I was her assistant, I knew when I'd done wrong, and when I'd done good.
Greg, you banned the other contestants from asking her questions. Why?
G: I said that because whenever anybody asked her anything, she would give a ten-minute answer, a mad monologue like a chicken auctioneer. Particularly with the prize tasks. That’s when she went full throttle. Sometimes you need to rein people in. I had no choice, because we've only got so many hours to record.
Alex, she made you put lipstick on, and she smashed a sheep prop because she got over-excited. Did you enjoy being her assistant?
I did look forward to every task, although they were chaos. You didn't know what was coming. I felt like she'd unleashed something a little bit. That task where she smashed the sheep was something to do with not being boring. I think she saw it as, look, I'm a mum of four, I'm doing this for my children, so I'm going to have a big laugh here. And she really did. She wasn't taking anything seriously.
Let’s talk about Amy next.
A: She's a funny person. That's why we booked her. She's won the Perrier and all that, so people who don’t know her, will know her very soon, because she's building up to the crest of the wave.
G: Her podcast does very well. She's on the correct trajectory for someone so naturally, effortlessly funny. She’s an absolutely brilliant comedian, and so likeable and so inventive. I was going to say unflappable, but she was actually incredibly flappable.
A: At the same time, she's really giggly. When I think of her, she's giggling all the time. But she's also smart. That makes her sound like we're writing her off as a giggling idiot, but she's not. She's smart.
G: There are two types of people. There are people who open the tasks and go, ‘Oh God, no’. And then there are people who read the task like Amy and start laughing, because they know it's going to be chaos. It's great to have that energy there. She's also quick witted and funny and good company.
Greg, you did take the mick out of her accent a lot.
G: It's a very route one joke to make, but if people are going to throw those balls up, I'm going to hit them.
And what about Joel Dommett?
A: For anyone who only knows him from shows like The Masked Singer, he's a proper comedian. When it comes to call-backs and little lines here and there, he's so useful for our show. Hopefully Taskmaster will show that he's a really funny stand-up as well as a great presenter.
G: He is also an overgrown child, the like of which we've not had on before. I empathise with that energy. When I saw there was a task where they got to use t-shirt guns, I was furious that I'd not had a go with a t shirt gun. The energy we saw from Joel throughout it was, ‘Oh my God, here's a thing I can play with’. And yet he's a father. I love that.
A: He turns up with his skateboard. That's a good sum up of him. He and Amy together were like little brother and sister. Naughty children having fun who are also really clever and intelligent comedians.
What about Armando?
G: Alex and I are in awe of Armando's work, of course, and that affects you. In my role where I am nominally some sort of superior or authority figure, when someone like Armando is on who you've been devoted to for decades, it's tricky. But you soon find the dynamic. We're not in Armando's world anymore. We're in Taskmaster.
A: We had him on because he's such a hero. I thought he might be strict and serious, but he's a really dopey clever person. He's one of the stupid-clevers. Crucially, he doesn't care. He doesn't mind that he gets things wrong.
A: He has some disdain for the show but has agreed to do it, and we know he loves the show. He was coming from a position of comedy.
G: I thought he was hilarious, both intentionally and unintentionally. It's great to see him being unintentionally silly and bad at things. Seeing the writer of The Thick of It doing his David Brent dance, was exceptional.
A: It must be nice for him to reveal his silly side. His daughter in the green room afterwards said to me, ‘It's like the public are seeing the Armando we've seen at home for years’. She also said she'd never seen Armando that happy on TV before. He was enjoying himself.
Finally, Kumail. What did he bring?
A: He was probably the most argumentative of the contestants, but in an effortlessly charming way. I love what a big fan of the show he is. He’s hugely famous in America, but a lot of people here won't know him. My parents would never have heard of him. He's in a strange place, a fish out of water. You can compare him slightly to Jason Mantzoukas, but he’s different enough for it not to feel the same.
G: He’s a little more arch than Jason. Less destructive, less wild. Sometimes he would throw an arch look at Alex during the tasks that suggested Alex had no power over him, even when he made catastrophic mistakes. He’d be like, ‘I'm totally in control of what I'm doing here’, although he often wasn't.
A: He’s got very big muscles. Let's get that on record. His meal choices were different to everybody else’s.
G: He's got a lovely body. To spend an intense period of time with somebody who's got a body that you know you'll never have is fascinating. It’s the first time we’ve had double hunk on a show. We’re not normally Hunk Central on Taskmaster.
A: Joel and Kumail both went to the gym between recordings. Not one person has ever gone to the gym between recordings before.
G: There was a lovely bit where Joel and Amy turned to each other and went, ‘He’s SO famous’, like the naughty little children they are.
A: He coped well with that dynamic. It's probably weird for him because they weren't famous to him. But they all became firm friends.
G: He's friends with a lot of comics over here like Nish Kumar. He might end up moving here. His wife was in the audience and features in the show, which is sweet. He’s an anglophile.
Picture/interview C4.
